FACULTY
PERSPECTIVES

VALUE-CENTERED MANAGEMENT: JUST DO IT?

By
Gregory B. Markus, Professor of Political Science and Research Scientist,
ISR

Introduction

I view the proposed policy of
Value-Centered Management (VCM) from the vantage point of someone who has
worked for over 20 years within a unit that operates basically according
to VCM principles. The Institute for Social Research retains its own
overhead, manages its own personnel matters, makes its own space
allocations, even builds its own buildings. Moreover, within ISR the three
Centers are largely responsible for their own revenue and expenditure
decisions.

On balance, ISR has flourished as a consequence of the
high degree of managerial autonomy it exercises. The Institute's revenues
have grown steadily, collaboration among the interdisciplinary research
staff is cordial and productive, research output is of high quality
overall, and the Institute has developed close working relationships with
a number of LS&A departments and other units on campus.

There
is nothing inherently irreproducible about the ISR experience, and if
other U-M units were to acquire greater control over their own budgetary
affairs, the results could be quite positive. I say "could be" because it
is well known that the aggregation of individually rational,
self-interested activity can sometimes yield a collective disaster for
common-pool resources (such as a university's collective enterprise).
Aware of that possibility, however, sensible people can and frequently do
establish operating norms, institutions, and procedures enabling them to
avoid such tragedies.

Despite my favorable predisposition toward
policies that enable organizational units to exercise greater agency over
their own futures, I have two criticisms of the proposed VCM policy for
U-M. The first is substantive and has to do with what I see as inadequate
safeguards against real threats that VCM poses to certain core University
values. The second is procedural and concerns aspects of the planning and
proposed implementation of VCM as I understand them.

Inadequate
Safeguards

Many faculty members and administrators at U-M are
troubled by the disincentives for interdisciplinary, cross-unit work that
VCM engenders and the prospect of individual units attempting to "game"
VCM to the overall detriment of the Uni-versity. As a U-M committee report
makes clear, any VCM-style policy has some "real limitations," most
important of which is the possibility of a "growth in efforts to 'beggar
thy neighbor'--to do things in the financial interest of a particular unit
but not of the U-M as a whole" (PACE, May 1991, p. 9). These limitations
are, to repeat, real and not merely potential or hypothetical.

An
assessment of VCM-style budgeting at the Indianapolis campus of Indiana
University and Purdue University, for example, concluded that whatever its
various advantages (and there were many), the process reinforces a
"tendency toward isolation of units," "discourages cooperation between
units," negatively affected the "sense of community," and "motivated
decisions on financial grounds that 'hurt' academic quality."

I
have read a half-dozen memoranda from the U-M Administration and attended
at least as many discussions about what was formerly known as
Responsibility Center Management and is now VCM. In my judgment the
administration has consistently down-played the likely disadvantages of
its proposal. A recent memo from Associate Provost Robert Holbrook's
office, for example, replied to serious questions about VCM with facile
responses: "this is really old wine in new bottles"; the possibility of
gaming "is true, but it is true of any system" ; "concern about how to
encourage interdisciplinary work is not new," and so on.

Obviously,
concern about encouraging interdisciplinary work is not new. What would be
new under VCM is that new disincentives to interdisciplinary and
inter-unit cooperation would unquestionably exist. How to deal with
them?

It is natural for a policy's proponents to accentuate the
positives and de-emphasize the negatives when making their case to a
skeptical audience (and let there be no doubt: the faculty as a group are
deeply skeptical about VCM). Also, perfect policies do not exist in the
real world, and therefore every new proposal runs the risk of being
nit-picked to death by doubters. At some point, however, the U-M
administration and faculty simply must engage in a more honest and open
conversation than has occurred to date about VCM's disadvantages and how
to mitigate them.

There are hopeful signs. In response to faculty
recommendations, the Provost recently scheduled a series of open meetings
across the campus to discuss VCM. Another faculty recommendation that has
been implemented is the creation of a VCM Faculty Oversight Board. The
focus and powers of this board are yet to be determined, however.

The core values most threatened by VCM are collegiality, cooperation,
and collaboration--the "three C's." If we move to VCM, we must have clear
and explicit mechanisms and practices in place to safeguard these values.
Based upon the ISR experience, I conclude that the effective way to
safeguard collegiality, cooperation, and collaboration is via collegial,
cooperative and collaborative practices. This leads me to my second,
procedural, criticism.

New Policies, Old Politics

The
process by which the RCM policy was considered at U-M and the plan for its
pending implementation insufficiently honor collegiality, cooperation, and
collaboration. For that matter, the VCM planning process has been
fundamentally at odds with principles undergirding VCM itself. I take
those principles to include such things as decentralized responsibility,
broadened and more explicit accountability, increased openness about
budgetary decision-making, and greater initiative and attention to quality
at every level of the University.

Yet VCM is conceived--and is
proposed to be implemented--via a process that can only be characterized
as hierarchical, narrow, unaccountable to the constituencies that would be
affected significantly by the new policy, and generally chilling to the
spirit of initiative and quality. I am reminded of the story told about
Woodrow Wilson during his days as president of Princeton University. "How
can I democratize this university," Wilson demanded, "if the faculty won't
do what I say?"

The U-M administration's various dicta about VCM
stress the importance of "leadership" to its success. The consensus view
of scholars and practitioners is that leadership is the practice of
mobilizing constituents in pursuit of shared goals. Garry Wills, for
example, wrote that leadership is "a matter of mutually determinative
activity" (his emphasis). One is free to disagree with this
characterization of leadership, but doing so will not alter three
facts:

 Enlarging a group can only increase its total
knowledge base. Leaders therefore include constituents in organizational
decision-making not to make constituents "feel" involved, or to co-opt
them, or to enhance the leader's public image. Leaders involve
constituents because it makes for smarter decisions.


Constituents execute policies more effectively and efficiently--they "buy
in" to them--if the policies are ones they have had a hand in co-creating.
Even if at the end of the day leaders observe that the outcome of a
collaborative process is the same policy they wanted to implement in the
first place, the collaboration will still have been worthwhile due to the
buy-in effect.

 The leadership capacities of constituents are
enhanced when they engage in mutually determinative activities in pursuit
of shared goals. Building the capacities of constituents is the right
thing to do ethically. It is equally the right thing to do with regard to
enhancing the quality of an organization (any organization) and its
products (any products).

Contrast the above ideas with the process
that brought VCM to where it is at the University of Michigan. At most,
only a handful of faculty members were invited to participate in
deliberations about VCM. Until very recently the overwhelming majority
were unaware that the plan even existed. A Provost may declare that VCM
will be implemented by a date certain; but the policy's practical success
rests ultimately in the hands of the faculty.

In closing, it is my
belief that faculty unease about Value-Centered Management extends beyond
that particular proposal, as consequential as VCM may be. There is a
growing sense among the faculty that the University decision-making
process needs fixing, an impression validated by the VCM experience to
date.

The time has come for all members of the U-M community to be
engaged more effectively by the University leadership in "mutually
determinative activity in pursuit of shared goals," and VCM is an ideal
topic with which to inaugurate that process.

This is not a call for
government by plebiscite. It does not imply institutional paralysis. Nor
does it mean that everybody has to be consulted about everything. It does
call for authentic leadership.

LS&A's Collegiate Seminars: One
View

By William C. Stebbins, professor of otolaryngology and of
psychology

For the past five years I have enjoyed teaching one of
the comparatively new collegiate seminars designed for undergraduates in
their first two years at Michigan. The seminars are part of a program that
began in a small way in the Literary College almost a decade ago and which
is now gathering momentum, with a considerable array of courses,
particularly for first and second year undergraduates. Thereare those who
are more effective teachers, and those who have had more experience, but
it is unlikely that there are any who enjoy this kind of teaching more
than I do. I am perfectly serious, and those cynics among you who have
been standing at a lectern in front of a large lecture hall for too many
years should take heart. My own experience is somewhat idiosyncratic, but
I have benefited from an interchange with others of my colleagues who have
also offered these seminars. These productive exchanges took place during
gatherings of those of us who taught them, which were arranged by
Associate Dean Jack Meiland and later by Associate Dean Michael
Martin.

The objective of the collegiate seminars has been expressed
in various ways, but it is my understanding that they came about in part
as a reaction to the hectoring from without, suggesting that we were not
offering the best possible education to our undergraduates at this
university. The seminars were put together in the hope that Michigan could
persuade members of their senior faculty to offer their expertise in the
classroom to undergraduates in the form of more personal contact, and with
the purpose of teaching "critical thinking" and eschewing rote
memorization, boring introductory textbooks, and the highlighting of every
other passage in the reading material with those fluorescent yellow and
pink pens. In effect, we were looking for an alternative to the sunburn
theory of learning which assumes that the words of great lecturers and
textbooks will be absorbed through the skin like the rays of the sun. Of
course the concept of critical thinking is not easily grasped. As a
psychologist, I realize fully how inadequately we comprehend it. However,
like the bull in the china shop, and as a former behaviorist, I defined it
rather bluntly in terms of the behavior of the students I was trying to
teach--not in terms of thinking per se but rather in terms of its output
in the form of critical speaking and critical writing.

The course
was designed as a substitute for the lecture course on the Introduction to
Psychology as a Natural Science and was titled: "Experimental Inquiry in
Psychology: Mind, Brain, and Perception." I assigned five paperbacks that,
I thought, covered this material in an organized and systematic manner and
thus would represent the course content. These included Niko Tinbergen's
Curious Naturalists, Ulrich Neisser's Cognition and Reality, Peter
Medawar's Pluto's Republic, Carl Sagan's The Dragons of Eden (about the
structure and evolution of the brain), and B.F. Skinner's About
Behaviorism. The following statement given to the students who signed up
for the course describes fairly well the objectives of the course as I
taught it:

What to expect in taking this course

1. This is a
seminar, not a lecture course.

2. Your evaluation will depend on
your participation in class. That means vocal communication and discussion
in class are absolutely essential. If you feel awkward about speaking in
class, I will advise and counsel you to take another course.

3. The
reading is the basis for class discussion, and most of the time I will be
asking you to discuss issues or answer questions in class arising from the
reading. You have to do the reading to contribute to class discussion. I
will almost never lecture. Course content is contained in the reading.

4. Four papers and revisions of each (no revision necessary if you get
an A) are required, and deadlines for these papers are absolute. The paper
with the lowest grade is dropped. Technically you only have to do three
papers.

5. This is not a course for notetakers, highliters, or
passive learners. You have to play to win.

So why, you might ask
yourself, would I want to take this course? There are no multiple choice
or true-false tests, in fact no required in-class tests or exams at all.
You can shoot off your mouth without fear of recrimination if you have
done the reading. If you are not one already, we will make a critical
thinker out of you. You will provide yourself with a good grasp of the
major issues in biological psychology. Besides, we have a good time, and
this is what teaching and learning are all about. It is an interactive
process. Who said so? Socrates.

Invariably, I would lose three or
four students out of 20 after the second class session, when they realized
that I meant what I said--in the handout and in class--that in every
session they would be put on the spot for the answer to a question from me
or from another student (originally directed at me but then deflected to
them) or to discuss a specific issue arising from the reading. Those who
stayed were active participants throughout the course, and the attendance
remained high (their grade depended not upon their attendance directly,
but upon their involvement in class). Papers were heavily edited for
content and equally for organization and style, and revisions were
expected to take account of those editorial comments. One grade was given
for the original paper and another for the revision. Paper topics included
a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of observation and
experiment in science, of induction and deduction as means of approaching
an experiment, and of the principal theories of localization of function
in the brain. Illustrative examples, and there were many, came from the
reading and from class discussion. The final course grade was based only
upon class participation and on the papers. For students who improved
steadily throughout the course, early grades were discounted. Improvement
mattered a great deal. I used the MTS message system as an extension of
office hours but, more important, as a way of firing questions at the
students for class discussion the day before class.

I will teach
the seminar next year for the sixth time. There is no question but that
teaching it the way I do is more work than teaching a traditional lecture
course. Paper grading is very time-intensive. I fully realize, of course,
that such a seminar format is not applicable across-the-board for all
courses. Yet it is the most exciting teaching that I have done while at
Michigan. When intellectually stimulated, U-M undergraduates are an
enthusiastic, compelling, and rewarding group to exchange ideas with. I
think that the course works for most of the students. I base this upon
their comments and from the fact that I am still in touch with many of
those who have taken the course over the five years that I have offered
it. I came away impressed with the quality of thinking that developed in
these very talented undergraduates, barely out of high school. It was
exciting for me to watch them become critical of what they read and what
others said but in a thoughtful and non-personal way, analytical in terms
of taking a problem apart in order to deal with it more effectively, and
more understanding of the nature and process of biological and behavioral
science.